I posted the guitar of Jayme Ancla of The Strangeness! I have more posts lined-up but I’m still writing them. Also, I’m going to pace things so I don’t run out of posts haha. Go follow it! :D
Limguhit: An instrument photoblog
Limguhit: A Photo Project
Today was a really tiring day because I went to Dope MNL, Gianna’s debut, then Attraction! Reaction! but it was worth it haha. I got to interview a handful of people too, but I’ll have to uh, pace the posts because I can’t go to gigs as much as I want to (plus classes are starting soon. Whoops.)
However, I finally decided on a name for my photo project! (Thanks, Marc Inting! Hehe.) Follow it if you want to! :)
I’m going to start interviewing people and taking photographs of instruments this Saturday at Dope MNL. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can get my DSLR back from repairs befor then. Just in case I don’t, though, I’m going to be using my dad’s Canon S100. It’s a pretty solid camera for a point-and-shoot, really. Here’s a test shot above, of my first guitar ever. I think I’ll have to take it again in RAW, though. I’ll wait until I have the benefit of natural lighting tomorrow. (It’s currently dinnertime.)
I still don’t have a name for my photo project, either. I want something short and sweet, preferably in Filipino. Oh well, I’ll still have a lot of time, since I have to have to interview a lot of people anyway. I’ll probably publish this via Tumblr, and I’ll upload maybe three interviews a week. I’ll see. After all, classes are going to start soon and I’m not sure if I’d have enough time to go to gigs regularly (because I am a diligent student HAHA).
Anyway, this is my first guitar: A classical Oscar Schmidt. I’ll explain more about it when I’m done setting the separate blog for the project up, but you can see that the fretboard’s pretty worn out since I’ve been playing it since I was ten. Years of memories right there.
An idea for a photo project
I’ve always loved looking at pictures of instruments, especially worn out ones. It’s great to see a guitar that’s well-loved, meaning one that’s gone through a lot. I hope that I’ll actually get to have a guitar long enough for it for the finish to have worn off so that I can see the wood grain. That’s beautiful.
I know that some people think that scratches and dents are ugly (and I understand how it feels to be extremely careful with a new guitar haha) but then again, they’re inevitable, in the long run. You learn to love signs of wear and tear as signs of hard work. It sounds cheesy, I know, pero think of it as a binyagan. Or trial by fire, take your pick.
Pat Graham’s Instrument is actually one of my pegs for this project! I spent a good couple of hours browsing through in the bookstore. (It’s pretty expensive. Sad.) Anyway, Graham takes pictures of musicians’ instruments and asks them about it. Johnny Marr wrote the foreword, and he interviewed people from R.E.M. Pavement, Shellac, Sonic Youth, etc. It’s a great book, and I couldn’t have enough of it, and I’d love to find out the stories behind the instruments of local musicians here, in Manila.
Anyway, long story short: Hi, I’d like to take pictures of your instruments and ask about the stories behind them. If you’re interested in helping me out with my project by letting me take a picture of your instrument of choice (guitars/keyboards/drumkits/triangles/sax/whatever) please do contact me! I’d really appreciate it. Leave me a message (or contact me personally through other means if you know any. Haha.) Please spread the word too, because I’d like to reach as many people as possible with this!
Siamese Dream
Pardon the pun, I just had to.
Anyway, here’s an excerpt of a phone call between me and my dad earlier:
Dad: Hi! Are you home?
Me: Yeap. Kanina pa.
Dad: Okay, anyway, I have good news!
Me: What is it?
Dad: Maroon 5 is coming.
Me: Ahhhh, okay.
Dad: Oh and wait!
Me: Yeah?
Dad: …The Smashing Pumpkins is coming, too.
So I guess I kind of flipped out and forgot what happened after that because The Smashing Pumpkins were one of my favorite bands in grade 7/early high school and they opened my mind to a lot of other music. (I’ll save that for another post, I guess). It’s a Siamese dream come true, ya know?
Anyway, my dad and I are really excited to watch, too. He introduced me to them, after all. We’re watching Tears for Fears later this year. (I’m hoping I can convince him to watch New Order in Singapore this August for his birthday pero medyo paasa na yan. Haha.)
I do hope that the setlist is Siamese Dream/Mellon Collie-heavy, because those are some of my favorite albums ever. (Plus, they went downhill after James Iha quit.) The Smashing Pumpkins is more of Billy Corgan and Friends now, but I wouldn’t mind watching. I already did miss Morrissey and Taking Back Sunday this year, after all.
P.S. It’s also really funny, considering how I was itching to see a stadium band last night. It’s like the universe read my mind.
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Another part is that I love rock ‘n’ roll in its basest, crudest, most paleolithically rudimentary form. That’s right, I love punk rock, and I’m not apologizing to anyone. As far as I can see, what Philips and Jacquet were doing on those Jazz at the Philharmonic sides was kind of the punk rock of its day. What’s more, I don’t give a good goddamn if somebody can barely play their instruments or even not at all, as long as they’ve got something to express and do it in a compelling way. Because to me music is any kind of sound made by one human being that moves another one. I suppose that validates a lot of stuff I consider total rubbish, like the aforementioned DiMeolas, Clarkes and Hancocks of the world as well as all the Jethro Tulls and Emerson, Lake and Palmers. But any musician is only as good as his attitude, chops be damned or fall where they may, and rock ‘n’ roll is all attitude. It was originally conceived as an outburst of inchoate obnoxious noise and that’s what most of the best of it has remained. In other words, punk rock is as venerable as Little Richard. Admittedly, there have been some people over the years who have made rock that was technically (more often technologically) complex and musicologically erudite and still not be worthless — the Byrds come to mind — but trying to turn the blare of the outcasts into something arty and thereby respectable is as sick as the attempts made over the years to “upgrade” jazz by polluting it with all sorts of European classicist elements (the efforts of John Lewis and Gunther Schuller, few others, excepted).
Okay: by any standards of “good” music, rock ‘n’ roll is just a lot of garbage noise, always has been and always will be or it’s not rock ‘n’ roll anymore (cf Billy Joel). Great jazz is great art. But I submit that, when it’s not arty, garbage noise can also be great art. Because great art is anything that stirs the human breast in profound ways that may even have deeper psychological and social implications, and that’s just exactly what, say, the Sex Pistols did. You may despise them, but they can’t be denied their impact. Who cares if they had no talent (a contention I consider debatable anyway)? Their talent was for aural carnage and rabble rousing.
The reason for all this blather is that I’m just about to try and convince you that punk rock and the very best jazz can not only coexist among one group of musicians performing together at one time, but that successful examples of said mutant hybrid already exist in abundance. That’s right, Iggy and the Stooges were every bit as good as Archie Schepp, and John Coltrane could have played with the Velvet Underground. (I more or less proved this contention the other night when I went on WPIX-FM in Manhattan and simultaneously played “Race Mixing” by Teenage Jesus and the Jerks on one turntable and the short version of “Nonaah” by Roscoe Mitchell on another, saying “Get ready all you tape hounds, because we have here a vintage unreleased take of Roscoe jamming with Lydia Lunch and the Jerks at the last Montreux Festival,” and most people apparently believed it.) It’s all music, and has more qualities in common than many fans of either genre might at first think.
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Rock and Roll and the 21st Century
You know, I really feel like watching a good old rock concert in a stadium. The last time I’ve done that was probably uh, Gin Blossoms or Stone Temple Pilots a couple of years ago. I can’t it believe that it’s been that long. Their shows were pretty fun, too.
It’s just that since then, I’ve been watching bands in small bars. Don’t get me wrong: I love it and I’ve discovered so many good bands that way, but there’s also something different about seeing a band fill up an entire stadium and get thousands of people going at the same time. Some bands are fit for small bars, while some are meant for a massive stage. I’d rather see Hendrix or Ledzep on a big stage. (Then again, I wouldn’t complain about seeing Hendrix or Ledzep anywhere at all.)
I mean I dunno I feel like lately people have been distancing themselves from the idea of “rock and roll,” hence parodies like This is Spinal Tap — which is great, don’t get me wrong, — School of Rock, and Tenacious D. I do admit that it can get tacky at times (a.k.a. AC/DC) but then again, I do love how ridiculous it can get. It’s also why I really like bands like Japandroids, who get that raw energy that comes with recognizing that you’re in a band and celebrating that fact. I also admire artists who are able to go beyond the limitations of playing songs in a band (like Radiohead and their later stuff), though! It’s a matter of personal taste and what I feel like listening to.
And maybe people are also uncomfortable with the idea of rock and roll nowadays because it’s pretty forward and being sarcastic all the time is a thing of the 21st century. Were The Scorpions serious about rocking you like a hurricane? Did Quiet Riot genuinely mean Cum on Feel the Noize? And okay, I’ll mention Guns N’ Roses because Appetite for Destruction is fucking good. I said it. Oh, and of course, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Those songs are so easy to enjoy immediately imo and I dig that.
It might be in to be detached or sarcastic re: feelings nowadays, but it’s tiring to have to slather everything in irony all the time.
Memory Machine #2: Hot Fuss by The Killers
I suddenly felt compelled to look Mr Brightside up on YouTube today, and it brought back a lot of memories of singing it with friends in grade school (even if it’s probably hilariously inappropriate for fourteen-year olds). My dad also used to play a house remix of this in the car.
I sure as hell couldn’t relate to Mr Brightside back then, but I loved it because it was so much fun. And in that summer between seventh grade and freshman year, I discovered the wonders of torrenting, which allowed me to download entire albums at once instead of looking the album up on Wikipedia and downloading songs individually via Limewire, watching out for those suspiciously small files, and praying that I didn’t get any viruses.
This brings me to Hot Fuss, the album. I love a good pop song, and I love songs I can dance to. 2007-me loved that this was something I could dance to, yet it was still very much by a band instead of a laptop. (Don’t get me wrong, though. I love electronica but I wasn’t really receptive to it when I was younger because LOL.) Jenny Was a Friend of Mine was always a good choice for a song to get me pumped me up on weekday mornings. It’s a pretty great bassline, and I love how well it goes with the synths. This album is full of great hooks that sound pretty great loud, and synths. Oh, and don’t forget the bass. Dang, fuzzy bass. I haven’t really seen any of their live performances, but Brandon Flowers does have a pretty good voice that cuts right through the wall of sound like a knife does through butter. (What?)
Also: I remember that The Killers were supposed to have a concert here, but it got cancelled (and subsequently, my little heart got broken). WHAT HAPPENED?
I got my ID picture taken today! Anyway, it’s funny seeing these two side-by-side. That post-it’s from last summer, when I was still preparing for CETs.
